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  The bitter wind pierces my body.

  My feet are sore, my cheeks are pale…

  I have endured so much suffering

  my body has grown feathers.

  —“Buile Suibhne” (“The Frenzy of Suibhne”)

  THE PEOPLE

  Kingdom of Strathclyde

  House of Morken

  Aela: Languoreth’s servant

  Brant: Dragon Warrior, Lailoken’s cousin

  Brodyn: Languoreth’s chief of guard, Lailoken’s cousin

  Lailoken: Languoreth’s twin brother, Gwenddolau’s counsel

  Languoreth: Lailoken’s twin sister, Rhydderch’s wife

  House of Tutgual

  Angharad: youngest daughter of Rhydderch and Languoreth

  Cyan: second son of Rhydderch and Languoreth

  Elufed: queen of Strathclyde, a Pict

  Gladys: firstborn daughter of Rhydderch and Languoreth

  Morcant: eldest son of Tutgual

  Rhian: Morcant’s wife

  Rhydderch: second son of Tutgual, Languoreth’s husband

  Rhys: eldest son of Rhydderch and Languoreth

  Torin: guard

  Tutgual: king of Strathclyde

  Kingdom of Pendragon

  The Dragon Warriors

  Diarmid: Wisdom Keeper

  Eira: servant

  Emrys: the first Pendragon

  Fendwin: warrior

  Gwenddolau: Uther Pendragon, Emrys’s successor, Lailoken and Languoreth’s foster brother

  Maelgwn: warrior, Pendragon’s general

  Kingdom of Ebrauc

  Euerdil: Gwrgi and Peredur’s mother, Urien of Rheged’s sister

  Gwrgi: king of Southern Ebrauc, Peredur’s brother

  Peredur: king of Northern Ebrauc

  Kingdom of Gododdin

  Cwyllog: wife of Meldred

  Meldred: chieftain of Southern Gododdin

  Kingdom of Rheged

  Gwendolen: Urien’s daughter

  Taliesin: Song Keeper

  Urien: king of Rheged

  The Christians

  Brother Thomas: culdee

  Father Natan: Tutgual’s advisor, tutor to Languoreth’s children

  Mungo: former bishop of Strathclyde

  The Scots

  Aedan mac Gabrahn: king of Mannau and Dalriada

  Artùr: Aedan’s son

  Cai: warrior, Artùr’s foster brother

  The Picts

  Ariane: priestess, the Orcades

  Bridei: high king of the Picts

  Briochan: Wisdom Keeper

  Eachna: high priestess at Fortingall

  Fetla: Eachna’s daughter, Elufed’s elder sister

  Muirenn: chieftain of Dùn Déagh

  Talorcan: Muirenn’s lover

  PHONETIC PRONUNCIATIONS

  House of Morken

  Brodyn: “BRO-din”

  Lailoken: “LIE-lo-kin”

  Languoreth: “Lang-GOR-eth”

  House of Tutgual

  Angharad: “An-HA-rad”

  Cyan: “KY-ann”

  Elufed: “El-LEAF-ed”

  Gladys: “GLA-diss”

  Rhian: “REE-AHn”

  Rhydderch: “RU-therk”

  Rhys: “REEse”

  Tutgual: “TOOT-gee-al”

  Kingdom of Pendragon

  Eira: “EYE-ra”

  Emrys: “EM-riss”

  Gwenddolau: “GWEN-tho-lye”

  Maelgwn: “MILE-gwinn”

  Kingdom of Ebrauc

  Gwrgi: “Ga-WHERE-gi”

  Peredur: “PEAR-REE-dur”

  The Christians

  Moluag: “Ma-LEW-ig”

  The Picts

  Ariane: “Ah-REE-AH-nee”

  Bridei: “BRI-dee”

  Briochan: “BREE-o-can”

  Eachna: “AUCK-na”

  Muirenn: “MEER-in”

  In the 1830s, a group of quarrymen discovered a body buried on a hilltop two miles east of Dunipace, Scotland. The skeleton had been laid to rest in an ancient coffin of unhewn stone. No weapons, jewelry, mirrors, or combs were found in the grave. The only accompanying artifact was a large earthenware vase; inside it were the decayed remains of parchment. A report was published in the Second Statistical Account of Scotland, and the skeleton was removed so quarrying could continue.

  The body, the coffin, and the earthenware vase have all since been lost.

  Along with the parchment and whatever was written upon it.

  I.

  The battle of Arderydd

  between the sons of Eliffer

  and Gwenddolau, son of Ceidio.

  In which battle Gwenddolau fell:

  Myrddin went mad.

  —Annales Cambriae, entry for the year AD 573

  PROLOGUE

  Lailoken

  Hart Fell, the Black Mountain

  Kingdom of the Selgovae

  Late December, AD 573

  The snows have come.

  The cold seeps into my bones. Winter cuts into the mouth of this steep and dead-grassed valley, and the men huddle closer to the hearth, but no fire can warm us—winter in its bleakness leaves us shut for too many hours within these squat, wattled huts. We cannot escape the ghosts that followed as we fled, friends and fellow warriors. Cousins. Nephews. Brothers.

  I wake in the night to the haunting blast of a battle horn. To the sound of a thousand feet rushing toward the fortress through the river below. In sleep, I see bodies piled in heaps, bloodied. Sightless eyes. In sleep, my heels are slipping once more in mud, sliding backward into the muck, spears thrusting at my legs and swords battering my shield as I brace myself in the shield wall. “Hold,” I cry. “Hold!”

  I wake to find only hollow-eyed survivors, their eyes understanding in the dark.

  When the cavalry charged, the thundering of horses swallowed our battle cry. Never had I seen an army so vast—an angry horde of Britons, my own countrymen. We shared ancestors with even the most despicable among them; cowards who would not join us to fight the Angles came now, to finish us.

  We watched from high atop the fortress walls as they crept across our fields like so many fleas. We lit the brush fires. Let the smoke sting their eyes and clog their throats—let them taste our bitter battle fog.

  And as we stood, grim-faced in our armor, spear shafts in hand, a moment before the nightmare began, a single red deer fled from the forest below.

  A doe.

  A shaft of sun caught the glory of autumn leaves and her sleek, tawny pelt, and for a moment I was a boy again, standing with my twin sister, Languoreth, on the banks of the Avon Water as we watched a stag drink in the shallows of the river.

  A moment of grace before the horror of destruction.

  Now it is Yule, the day of the longest night.

  There are twelve days in winter when the sun stands still, and we warriors with our night terrors and our ill-knitting wounds and our bloody-faced ghosts need to conquer the darkness or we will be consumed by it. And so, at sunset, the men stood or propped themselves up as I spoke the old words and lit the Yule log.

  The woman who minds the goats had come the day before to take the stale mats from the floor, laying down clean woven rushes that smelled soft and sweet, a distant memory of
summer. She brought with her the charred remains of a new year’s fire, an offering to bless our hearth. “For luck,” she’d said, “so far from your homes.”

  Her gaze lingered upon the mottled scar upon my cheek that runs from temple to chin, the welt I’d borne now for eighteen winters, half-hidden by my beard.

  “Christians,” I’d said.

  She’d nodded as if I needn’t say more. Here in the lands of the Selgovae, Christ had not yet taken hold. Perhaps his priests were too frightened by the shades and sharp-toothed creatures that frequent the vast Caledonian Wood.

  Now my beard grows long.

  I think of my wife and her thick, honey-smooth hair, the way she tilted her head to gather it, sweeping her fingers across the back of her neck. She is yet alive, I can feel her across the distance.

  I can feel she is breathing.

  She tethers me to my body when my spirit wants to flee, for as the days pass, my mind turns dark. When I sit in contemplation, my mind begins to slip. There is a beast that stalks in the pit of night.

  I fear it will take me.

  On the bleakest mornings, I climb the icy path up the valley to seek solace at the spring. The trickle of mountain waters is speaking.

  Iron in blood, iron in water.

  My sister’s husband hunts us with dogs.

  Old Man Archer says, “Rhydderch may have dogs, but we Selgovae are wolves. He will never catch you out, not whilst we conceal you here.”

  It is true—no one steps foot in the Caledonian Deep without being seen. The Selgovae have watchers who appear and disappear as if made from mist. And we warriors of Pendragon can climb quickly, those of us who are sound. We can slip into the deep chasm of these hills while Rhydderch and his hunters are still specks far below.

  And yet one ear is ever pricked for the crow sound of our watchmen.

  I do not know whether I fear him or am calling him as I stand upon the boulder, high above the iron salt waters, looking out over the winter hills.

  I stand upon the boulder and wait for Rhydderch and his men.

  I wait.

  I watch.

  And I remember.

  CHAPTER 1

  Lailoken

  Strathclyde to the Borderlands

  Kingdom of Strathclyde

  Late Summer, AD 572

  It was the time of year when daylight stretched long. Travelers were often spied long into the lingering hours of dusk, yet on this day, the moors still blazed hot beneath sun when we stopped to make camp for the night.

  We were bound for the Borderlands, two days’ ride from my boyhood home, the fortress of Cadzow. We’d followed the wide and glittering twists of the river Clyde south and east, through lofty patches of oak and ash, past merchants rowing upstream in their currachs and men fishing from little coracles. We passed timber-built grain mills and neatly thatched tenant crofts as we traveled through the villages of my distant kin: men and women yet loyal to me and my sister, the children of Morken. Our father had been a fierce and honorable king. But as the people gathered to greet our caravan along the road, it was not me alone they cheered. They rushed from their huts to catch sight of the man who rode by my side—Uther Pendragon. Though he was not their ruler, he and his warriors had fought for many a winter to keep the Angles of Bernicia at bay.

  Gradually, the terrain shifted, and we left the villages behind. Soon hills rose turtle-backed in the distance, where pastures gave way to the wild, boggy expanse of moor. It was this land that spoke to me, for it led into the heart of the new kingdom that had become my home. The kingdom ruled by my foster brother, Uther.

  But Uther had not always been my foster brother’s name.

  He was a boy of fifteen winters called Gwenddolau when he first joined Emrys Pendragon. Emrys was a leader who’d inspired a brotherhood to rise up against the Angles, invaders from across the North Sea. The Angles had gained footing on our soil as hired mercenaries, but before long, through violence, they’d carved out a kingdom from stolen land and named it Bernicia. In resisting them, Emrys and his men became known throughout our land as the Dragon Warriors. There were battles, and then there was peace for a time. But when Emrys was murdered, war stirred once more. We chose the man best suited to defend Emrys’s lands. In becoming Pendragon’s successor, Gwenddolau became something more than a man. He became hero, protector, king.

  He became Uther Pendragon.

  The Other Pendragon.

  And I…

  I’d become more than a warrior, or son of Morken. I was a Wisdom Keeper, trained from a boy to be a king’s counsellor, his most trusted advisor. We defended our stretch of the Borderlands through the vigilance of our scouts and the brunt of our swords. Our tenant farmers were grateful. The Gods protected us. The land produced. All we required, we possessed in bounty.

  We traveled fast on fleet-footed horses. We traveled light, with thick cloaks and thin bedrolls, with little more than the sack full of oats each man strapped to his horse to be fried with water or blood from wild game. Thirteen leagues in a day we passed with ease.

  And yet on this day, we’d scarcely traveled through Hawksland and the Blackwood when my young niece bolted upright in the saddle before me and cried out, “Stop!”

  My horse tossed his head as I yanked back on the reins, gripping Angharad to keep her astride as the caravan came to a halt. “Angharad. What is it?” I asked.

  The Dragon Warriors drew up their mounts, restless and questioning. They’d never traveled with a child. Who among us had? Now we traveled in the company of a freckled girl of eight winters whose gray eyes were yet swollen with tears. At sunrise, Angharad had left all she had known to train with me as a Wisdom Keeper. That I was her uncle was little consolation.

  “The feathers,” she said now, pointing to the ground.

  “Feathers.” I followed the line of her finger to the place where, indeed, a cluster of crow feathers lay, their ink glinting rainbows in the sun. “And so they are.”

  It was this child’s curiosity about the natural world that had first endeared her to me, and now I was to foster her. Yet despite my reassurances to my sister, I was still learning the way.

  “Angharad. Surely you’ve seen crow feathers before.” I leaned forward only to see her brow furrow.

  “But I want to pick them up.”

  “Well, of course you may. But you must take more care when alerting me to feathers on your next sighting. You nearly tumbled from Gwydion’s back.”

  Angharad’s face flushed scarlet, her voice a whisper. “I’m sorry, Uncle.”

  There’d been little admonishment in my tone, yet my words alone were enough to flatten her. She pursed her lips in an effort to hold back tears, and guilt struck, pointed as a spear. “Oh, no, Angharad. Please. You mustn’t cry.”

  The warriors looked baffled as I glanced round in search of aid. Gwenddolau sat mounted at a distance beside my cousin Brant, expressions vigilant yet uncertain.

  “She’s your kin as well,” I grumbled, then motioned to Maelgwn, who already trotted toward us on his horse, green eyes alert.

  “What’s happened?” he demanded.

  “She’s weeping,” I said.

  “Aye, I can see.” He dismounted and went to her, taking her small hands in his. “Angharad, what is it?”

  “I didn’t intend for all the men to stop. I only wanted the feathers,” she said.

  “Tell me why.”

  She took a breath, searching the sky. “My mother told me our hearts are like birds, pricked full of feathers, and that each time we say good-bye, a feather will fall. One for a friend, two for a sweetheart. Three for a child.”

  At the mention of Languoreth, Maelgwn’s gaze softened. “And here you spied three feathers, just as your mother said.”

  Angharad nodded. “She promised if I found a feather, it had fallen from her heart. She promised if I picked it up and held it close, it would keep me safe.”

  “Then you must have them,” Maelgwn said.

 
; I watched as he handed Angharad the cluster of crow feathers. Long had Maelgwn loved my sister, Languoreth.

  As Angharad drew them to her chest, I searched for the right words.

  “I know your sadness, little one,” I began. “Languoreth and I, we lost our own mother when we were no more than ten winters—”

  Angharad’s eyes widened at the very thought. “But my mother is not dead.”

  Fool, Lailoken.

  “Aye. I mean, nay! Of course she isn’t.” I reached for her. “I only hope to say I know how your own heart must feel. We may collect each feather you see. But you need no such talismans to keep you safe. I swore to your mother—and I swear the same to you—you are safe with me, Angharad. I’m your uncle, your own blood, and… I love you.” The last came too gruffly, and I cursed myself again. Maelgwn frowned.

  But Angharad only wiped at her eyes, casting a weary look over her shoulder. “You’re not terribly good with children, are you?”

  I smiled in spite of myself. “You’re right, then,” I decided. “We’ve traveled far enough. We shall stop here for the night.”

  Gwenddolau approached, swinging down from his horse. “A rest is fine, but we cannot yet make camp. We haven’t passed more than five leagues, Lailoken.”

  “Well enough,” I said. “But ’tis only the first day of our journey, and Angharad is unaccustomed to long days upon horseback, brother. You cannot expect her to last from dawn ’til dusk in the saddle.”

  Gwenddolau’s clear blue eyes swept the broad expanse of moor, resting on the grassy mound that rose in the distance. “Surely it is ill luck to make our camp so close to a hill of the dead. I have seen enough shades in my day.”

  “Aye, we all spied the mound, and many a time have we passed it,” I said. “But the hill lies upstream, and the ashes within it are sleeping. Besides, we are not far from the old ring of stones. I’m certain Angharad would wish to see it. If you’ll not brave the shades for me, brave them for your niece, eh?”

  The look I received was one of predictable gravity—Gwenddolau’s humor had gone with seasons past. “I feel no more ease bedding beside a stone ring than I do a mound of the dead.”